Current and historical discussions of the best teams and players across the nation, along with question sets and tournaments. The board-run national polls also take place in this forum. Region-specific discussion live under this forum.

The rankings will be back this year. Preseason rankings will likely not be done until after I take the NAPLEX (hopefully later this month, maybe early September) so I can be licensed as a pharmacist, but they will be done before the end of September.

Note that your support on Patreon will be separate from any support I seek for the PACE Outreach Fund under the Monetizing my Madness fundraiser.

Fred, I appreciate all the effort you put into these rankings, but some of your decisions border on indefensible. You can make arguments for and against most any team, but to say that neither DCC or Hunter is a Top 25 team is just unreasonable. Both have indisputable depth and experience, and just a few weeks ago at Glasgow DCC definitively beat three teams you ranked. It seems like much of your rankings stem from unduly obedience to a single statistical method rather than reality.

benmillerbenmiller wrote:Fred, I appreciate all the effort you put into these rankings, but some of your decisions border on indefensible. You can make arguments for and against most any team, but to say that neither DCC or Hunter is a Top 25 team is just unreasonable. Both have indisputable depth and experience, and just a few weeks ago at Glasgow DCC definitively beat three teams you ranked. It seems like much of your rankings stem from unduly obedience to a single statistical method rather than reality.

Because God forbid teams realize that Fred is providing a rough ranking as a tool for them to use to get funding from their administration. No, we should yell at someone doing a ranking on the internet for teams to receive more funding instead!

As I opened my post with, I understand and appreciate the utility of Fred's rankings, but we all know they hold a far greater place in the QB community than offering a rough sketch. They are the most respected venue for team evaluation, and it shouldn't be heretical to point out when they're lacking. Having rankings that don't align with the actual HS quizbowl landscape serves no one well.

Fred, I appreciate all the effort you put into these rankings, but some of your decisions border on indefensible. You can make arguments for and against most any team, but to say that neither DCC or Hunter is a Top 25 team is just unreasonable. Both have indisputable depth and experience, and just a few weeks ago at Glasgow DCC definitively beat three teams you ranked. It seems like much of your rankings stem from unduly obedience to a single statistical method rather than reality.

Because God forbid teams realize that Fred is providing a rough ranking as a tool for them to use to get funding from their administration. No, we should yell at someone doing a ranking on the internet for teams to receive more funding instead!

Speaking only for myself, while my team is ranked highly here...

- I have strongly encouraged both coaches' and students' polls on hsquizbowl.org as important alternatives to Fred's poll. I don't like the laziness and/or pettiness that shows up in some submissions to the subjective polls, but they're... subjective.

- My administration doesn't care about any of this. The school has pretty much no idea what we're doing.

- While I understand that Fred's system is based on past strength and that Luke left Hunter and DCC lost three guys... I would have thought that it would have been not that hard to plug in Daniel Ma, since he has similar strengths and a solid record to go on. Also, couldn't DCC's B team guys could have been added to Robert Crawford? I don't actually know how the system works.

- I wanted to see how Fred's rankings stacked up against the coaches' rankings, so I fell for Fred's clever get-funding-in exchange-for-early-viewing scheme! I apparently have no life of my own and care far too much about this crap.

When the preseason rankings came out last year, somebody pointed out that Fred had DCC above Dorman even though Dorman had just beaten DCC. It turned out that Fred's ranking was appropriate because DCC was an awesome team even if they did lose some matches at the beginning of the season.

Maybe he'll be right again, and maybe he'll be wrong this time. He'll come out with new rankings in a few months, and if there is evidence he is wrong then those rankings will reflect that evidence.

David ReinsteinPACE President, Head Writer and Editor for Scobol Solo and Masonics (Illinois), TD for New Trier Scobol Solo and New Trier Varsity, Writer for NAQT, IHSSBCA Board Member, IHSSBCA Chair (2004-2014), New Trier Coach (1994-2011)

A thought: perhaps people should spend more time worrying about actually learning things and playing quizbowl then whether some person in Kentucky's system has ranked their team a spot or two higher than other teams very far away in drastically different circumstances, most of which they will never play. If you like Fred's rankings, read them, and if you don't like them, ignore them!

I think people should be able to criricize Fred's rankings without being dismissed out of hand as petty or obsessive. HSQBrank is a great resource for the community, but that doesn't mean it needs to be beyond reasonable critique. In this case, I think omitting two of the Preseason Poll's best five teams is worthy of at least talking about.

I also don't believe there's an equivalency between last year's DCC discussion and today's. DCC and Dorman were two top 10 teams (both in Fred's preseason rankings and at Nats) who played a single close game, while this year's DCC resoundingly bested a number of supposedly better teams while not even being ranked. From my perspective there's a pretty big difference between the two.

Everything in the Whole Wide World wrote:A thought: perhaps people should spend more time worrying about actually learning things and playing quizbowl then whether some person in Kentucky's system has ranked their team a spot or two higher than other teams very far away in drastically different circumstances, most of which they will never play. If you like Fred's rankings, read them, and if you don't like them, ignore them!

I think this is solid advice for all rankings; take them with a grain of salt.

benmillerbenmiller wrote:Fred, I appreciate all the effort you put into these rankings, but some of your decisions border on indefensible. You can make arguments for and against most any team, but to say that neither DCC or Hunter is a Top 25 team is just unreasonable. Both have indisputable depth and experience, and just a few weeks ago at Glasgow DCC definitively beat three teams you ranked. It seems like much of your rankings stem from unduly obedience to a single statistical method rather than reality.

Because Eshaan went 2-4 in in his other prelim games at PACE and ended up in 59th at PACE and 98th at HSNCT. While it was very, very impressive, a single win doesn't by itself bump him up that many places.

I am not talking about one game or one tournament. I am talking about two teams which a knowledgeable corps of voters deemed some of country's very best being excluded from our community's premier rankings for no legitimate reason beyond statistical procedure. If someone can offer a compelling argument as to why either Hunter or DCC is not one of the best 25 teams in the nation, I genuinely want to hear it. Without one, I think it's legitimate to question why they were left out.

To be clear, I do not play for Hunter. I do not play for DCC. I have no personal stake in the success or recognition of either club. All I want to do is express concerns over statistical decision-making which will possibly distort people's perceptions of this season's high school quizbowl landscape.

I am not talking about one game or one tournament. I am talking about two teams which a knowledgeable corps of voters deemed some of country's very best being excluded from our community's premier rankings for no legitimate reason beyond statistical procedure. If someone can offer a compelling argument as to why either Hunter or DCC is not one of the best 25 teams in the nation, I genuinely want to hear it. Without one, I think it's legitimate to question why they were left out.

To be clear, I do not play for Hunter. I do not play for DCC. I have no personal stake in the success or recognition of either club. All I want to do is express concerns over statistical decision-making which will possibly distort people's perceptions of this season's high school quizbowl landscape.

One day you will realize "statistical procedure" is in fact LEGITIMATE reason.

Ben AnthonyHarrison High School '17, Purdue University '21 I made this as a freshman, I realize my name is stupid. I never even played Bioshock.

I am not talking about one game or one tournament. I am talking about two teams which a knowledgeable corps of voters deemed some of country's very best being excluded from our community's premier rankings for no legitimate reason beyond statistical procedure. If someone can offer a compelling argument as to why either Hunter or DCC is not one of the best 25 teams in the nation, I genuinely want to hear it. Without one, I think it's legitimate to question why they were left out.

To be clear, I do not play for Hunter. I do not play for DCC. I have no personal stake in the success or recognition of either club. All I want to do is express concerns over statistical decision-making which will possibly distort people's perceptions of this season's high school quizbowl landscape.

One day you will realize "statistical procedure" is in fact LEGITIMATE reason.

There's is nothing innately correct about the statistical design of Fred's rankings. He chooses to create ideally objective placements based on PPB and PPG share. Those stats hold no intractable bond with reality, in fact, they can easily be skewed by factors like the loss of several high-scoring players from a still-deep program. Fred reasonably says that there's no easy way to account for this, which I entirely understand, but that doesn't make the effect any less detrimental. Saying something is right because it's done a certain way is only as truthful as the method is accurate.

I am not talking about one game or one tournament. I am talking about two teams which a knowledgeable corps of voters deemed some of country's very best being excluded from our community's premier rankings for no legitimate reason beyond statistical procedure. If someone can offer a compelling argument as to why either Hunter or DCC is not one of the best 25 teams in the nation, I genuinely want to hear it. Without one, I think it's legitimate to question why they were left out.

To be clear, I do not play for Hunter. I do not play for DCC. I have no personal stake in the success or recognition of either club. All I want to do is express concerns over statistical decision-making which will possibly distort people's perceptions of this season's high school quizbowl landscape.

I don't presume to speak for Ben A., but I am pretty sure this was satire (not that the win wasn't impressive, it was).

I also think we can all be a little more grateful to Mr. Morlan for making these rankings. Do I agree with Mr. Morlan's rankings all the time: no. Do I enjoy them: yes. This is not the BCS rankings where they actual decide who gets into the QB championships, these are meant to rank teams for comparison's sake based on what we all consider to be the best method of statistical comparison out there. Mr. Morlan puts a lot of work into these rankings, and I for one am thankful.

I do appreciate Fred's rankings, as I have now pointed out repeatedly in this thread. However, my gratitude does not bar me from presenting concerns about his decisions. I don't agree that Fred's comparison methods are necessarily the best possible, and regardless of what semantics games we play, these rankings hold significant weight within high school quizbowl. Hunter and DCC are top ten quizbowl teams at the very least. We do no one any favors by ignoring their ultra-dubious exclusion out of blind faith in one person's considerable effort.

Presuming DCC and Hunter are automatic top 25 teams in spite of their lost talent - 3/4 of an evenly distributed team for the former and one of the best players nationally in the latter case - is a dismissal of the importance of those players. Ma is very talented but his teams topped out at 121st prenationals. DCC B was 46th, but it's unclear how they'll mesh with Crawford.

It's not 2005. There's sufficient talent in the game that it's not automatic that teams in Hunter'sor DCC's positions shouldn't be assumed as constantly at the same talent level each year.

Additionally, I did not ignore either team. Both are in the group of teams to watch in the future, equivalent to a top 38 spot or whatever my cutoff was.

It would not shock me if either or both ends up in the top ten by seasons end. They're talented players with talented coaches.

Antrobus63 wrote:- My administration doesn't care about any of this. The school has pretty much no idea what we're doing.

I had a multiple email thread with yourself and your principal back in 2015 about your ranking then.

I wrote a very long response to this (as I am wont to do) but rather than bore everyone with the intricacies of how things really work at my kid's school, I'll just point out that we have had a new principal for the past year-plus. Also, while I certainly did encourage you to write to the principal, and was grateful you did so, your correspondence and rankings have had NO material or morale-boosting effect on our support within the school. That's not your fault. It's just a fact.

benmillerbenmiller wrote:I do appreciate Fred's rankings, as I have now pointed out repeatedly in this thread. However, my gratitude does not bar me from presenting concerns about his decisions. I don't agree that Fred's comparison methods are necessarily the best possible, and regardless of what semantics games we play, these rankings hold significant weight within high school quizbowl. Hunter and DCC are top ten quizbowl teams at the very least. We do no one any favors by ignoring their ultra-dubious exclusion out of blind faith in one person's considerable effort.

Talk about semantics games, you put more words in my mouth than God did the prophets:

-I never said that you had to agree. I simply said we shoudl be grateful. And you keep saying your grateful, but when say your grateful and just complain the whole time about the gift, your not really that grateful.

- I also never said they weren't important. I said they weren't gospel. There will also be more rankings around mid-year when there have been more tournaments which will probably mean more. If DCC and Hunter are top 25 teams, they'll prove it. If not they won't. (No disrespect meant).

-Additionally, using a more subjective and biased poll (And I use bias in the statistical sense, due to the small sample size and the self-selection nature of the poll) to support your argument against Fred's ranking does not help your argument. (Not that I don't appreciate it, I think its interesting, it is just less useful since it will always favor big names on off years than local powerhouses like Wayzata and Fremd.)

-Everyone agrees aPPB is one of the best possible methods. That is why we hold the rankings in such high regard to begin with and use aPPB for seeding decisions.

Ricky, someone can both appreciate Fred's energies and disagree with his results. It's not one or the other.

It is not that I lack awareness of teams like Wayzata or duPont Manual that Fred ranked so highly, I just don't think they're 20+ places better than Hunter or DCC. Both Wayzata and duPont finished behind Hunter A, Hunter B, DCC A, DCC B, and DCC C at HSNCT last year, and I think a holistic evaluation of returning talent still shows Hunter and DCC to have better teams entering this year. Not to say that Wayzata or duPont aren't solid teams with top-tier potential, I just think their current top 10 standing is statistical noise in Fred's formula.

As for the preseason poll, I think you are a bit too dismissive of its legitimacy. Gabe polled a reasonable number of extremely knowledgable people on high school quizbowl, and while biases and mistakes are clearly present, I think the poll presents a relatively accurate and informed take on HS quizbowl. I personally spent hours on my picks and wrote up a multi-page explanation for them, which is hardly just throwing together a list of names I recognized. I think the Preseason Poll offers a more accurate prediction of this season's best 25 teams than Fred does, but we will all have to wait and find out.

Ben,If you had actually read my posts, you will know that I never said you could not disagree. Hell, I said I disagree sometimes. I simply said that you've made your point and you continuing to complain about it for whatever reason makes you look ungrateful and is not getting you anywhere. It is not the absolute travesty you melodramatically make it out to be.

By the way, having people volunteer to for your poll makes it a statistically bad poll as any basic stats class will teach you. The only way to get an unbiased poll is through an SRS or some form of it (like a stratified or clustered sample) which for quizbowl would be very difficult, ergo it is very hard to find/perform a statistically unbiased poll for quizbowl. That is why we have Fred's rankings.

If the Preseason Poll was claiming to represent the predictive views of our entire community, then criticisms of sampling and methodology would be in order. But the Preseason Poll doesn't make those claims because it is not an opinion poll. It aggregates the views of many informed people solely as a means of easily communicating the predictions of that group. Just like the AP poll in college football, the Preseason Poll is not a sampled survey but is still a valid way of examining teams' perceived strengths.

benmillerbenmiller wrote:If the Preseason Poll was claiming to represent the predictive views of our entire community, then criticisms of sampling and methodology would be in order. But the Preseason Poll doesn't make those claims because it is not an opinion poll. It aggregates the views of many informed people solely as a means of easily communicating the predictions of that group. Just like the AP poll in college football, the Preseason Poll is not a sampled survey but is still a valid way of examining teams' perceived strengths.

That makes the assumption that people know every region pretty well, which is patently false (take for example the people that put Naperville N in the top 25 even though Jakob graduated). Morlan's rankings, as flawed as they may be, are better than simply a bunch of people's opinions, no matter what their tie to the community.

Just to point out, my teams got to 121st place because:1. I played in only around half the tournaments that Hunter B played.

2. Hunter B always has horrible PPBs (and, to some extent, variable performance) because we aren't a set team; we are just whoever shows up for a given tournament, so we don't cover categories well. I had literally 0 teammates in common between HSNCT and PACE, and we never played two tournaments the whole year with the same roster. Our PPBs in lit were always horrible on a regular basis due to my severe weakness in that category, which torpedoed our overall PPBs. But that is in no way indicative of how Hunter A will play this year. We have a very fine literature player in Chloe. And last year, when Hunter B was getting the luck of the draw and not getting lit bonuses, we played very well against teams ranked very high on Morlan rankings (e.g. playing Montgomery Blair within 1 tossup and soundly defeating Davis, both in the top 15).

3. If anyone wishes to get stats on how Hunter A this year might play, check on HFT of last year. We played with what will likely be our A team for much of this year, got second place, and had 22.84 PPB (after adjustment, 25.19) with 4 powers per game. I expect those numbers to rise with chemistry and an additional year of practice, and those stats were on a housewrite, which we usually do worse at.

I'm confused as to why Adlai Stevenson didn't at least get an honorable mention in the rankings. At IHSSBCA Kickoff http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/4079/stats/upper_div_prelims Stevenson played with their approximate 2017-18 roster and got over 24 PPB on an IS-set, which should put them in the top 15 teams if projected aPPB is accurate.

username_crisis_averted wrote:I'm confused as to why Adlai Stevenson didn't at least get an honorable mention in the rankings. At IHSSBCA Kickoff http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/4079/stats/upper_div_prelims Stevenson played with their approximate 2017-18 roster and got over 24 PPB on an IS-set, which should put them in the top 15 teams if projected aPPB is accurate.

From the looks of the stats, they were playing 5-on-5; that can't really be compared to regular quizbowl.

username_crisis_averted wrote:I'm confused as to why Adlai Stevenson didn't at least get an honorable mention in the rankings. At IHSSBCA Kickoff http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/4079/stats/upper_div_prelims Stevenson played with their approximate 2017-18 roster and got over 24 PPB on an IS-set, which should put them in the top 15 teams if projected aPPB is accurate.

From the looks of the stats, they were playing 5-on-5; that can't really be compared to regular quizbowl.

It was 5-on-5, like many other Illinois tournaments. While that is useful in state rankings (since our two main state championships our 5-on-5), the fifth player leads to a huge appb boost that makes it tough to use in national rankings.

username_crisis_averted wrote:I'm confused as to why Adlai Stevenson didn't at least get an honorable mention in the rankings. At IHSSBCA Kickoff http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/4079/stats/upper_div_prelims Stevenson played with their approximate 2017-18 roster and got over 24 PPB on an IS-set, which should put them in the top 15 teams if projected aPPB is accurate.

From the looks of the stats, they were playing 5-on-5; that can't really be compared to regular quizbowl.

username_crisis_averted wrote:I'm confused as to why Adlai Stevenson didn't at least get an honorable mention in the rankings. At IHSSBCA Kickoff http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/4079/stats/upper_div_prelims Stevenson played with their approximate 2017-18 roster and got over 24 PPB on an IS-set, which should put them in the top 15 teams if projected aPPB is accurate.

From the looks of the stats, they were playing 5-on-5; that can't really be compared to regular quizbowl.

I didn't consider this performance because it was Stevenson's 9th best performance on the season. I looked at over 100 teams (counting A, B, etc separately) for the preseason rankings. If I went this deep into every team - assuming every team played that many tournaments, I'd be looking at 900 stat lines - I probably would have never finished the rankings.

Since this news is bound to get spread further and further, and more and more questions are coming my way, I might as well tell it to all: Due to a bad concussion, I am out for the first portion of the season until at least December. I hope to be back for Columbia Winter, but even when I return, I will likely not be at full strength until February or March. In the meantime, of course Hunter A will be ranked comparatively worse, but I should be fully back by nats.

Subotai the Valiant, Final Dog of War wrote:Since this news is bound to get spread further and further, and more and more questions are coming my way, I might as well tell it to all: Due to a bad concussion, I am out for the first portion of the season until at least December. I hope to be back for Columbia Winter, but even when I return, I will likely not be at full strength until February or March. In the meantime, of course Hunter A will be ranked comparatively worse, but I should be fully back by nats.

New rankings are now out at Patreon. As a reminder, for just $5 a month you get access to the rankings early plus exclusive podcasts. If you just want to treat it like a tip jar and give a dollar or two a month, that's fine as well! You'll be thanked on every single post and podcast for as long as you're a patron.

The rankings will be posted publicly Saturday afternoon. I'll be traveling at that time, though, so I won't be able to post a reminder until Sunday.